Dwijendranath Maitra (1878 – 1950) was son of Lokenath Maitra, who hailed from Rajshahi

Rajshahi

The city of Rajshahi is the divisional headquarters of Rajshahi division as well as the administrative district that bears its name and is one of the six metropolitan cities of Bangladesh. Often referred to as Silk City and Education City, Rajshahi is located in the north-west of the country and...

, now in Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

. Lokenath Maitra had married Jagattarini in an inter-caste widow remarriage, a daring task in those days.

In 1902, he stood first in the M.B. (Bachelor of Medicine) examination from Medical College and was the first Indian to be appointed house
surgeon in Mayo Hospital. In 1912, he went to England and America to get himself acquainted with the latest developments in medicine and surgery. There he met Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...

. He discussed about the poet with others.

Without mentioning his name, W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

 starts the introduction to the Gitanjali

Gitanjali

Gitanjali is a collection of 103 English poems, largely translations, of the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.This volume became very famous in the West, and was widely translated....

 as follows:

A few days ago I said to a distinguished doctor of medicine, “I know no German, yet if a translation of German poet had moved me, I would go the British Museum and find books in English that would tell something about his life, and of the history of his thought. But though these prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for years, I shall not know anything of his life, and of the movements of thought that have made them possible, if some Indian traveller will not tell me.” It seemed natural to him that I should be moved, for he said, “I read Rabindranath everyday, to read one line of him is to forget all the troubles of the world.”

He travelled to the USA with Rabindranath Tagore.

He was a member of Sukumar Ray's

Sukumar Ray

Sukumar Ray , , was a Bengali humorous poet, story writer and playwright who mainly wrote for children. As perhaps the most famous Indian practitioner of literary nonsense, he is often compared to Lewis Carroll...

 Monday Club, which had such noted personalities as Satyendranath Dutta

Satyendranath Dutta

Satyendranath Dutta , a Bengali poet, is considered the wizard of rhymes...

, Suniti Kumar Chaterjee, Atul Prasad Sen, Kalidas Nag, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis FRS was an Indian scientist and applied statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India...

 and Prabhat Kumar Mukhopdhyay as members.

In 1915, he established the Bengal Social Service League. It was initially named Bangiya Hitasadhan Mandali. Possibly the oldest secular social welfare organisation, Rabindranath Tagore was president of this organisation for many years. Jnananjan Niyogi

Jnananjan Niyogi

Jnananjan Niyogi was actively associated with the Indian independence movement and was a social reformer.-Early life:The son of Braja Gopal and Sumangala Niyogi, he was born at Gaya on 7 January 1891...

served as its secretary. Amongst others involved in it was Nishi Kanta Bose, a renowned social worker.

He was a pioneer in the use of audio-visual methods for the education of adults. For the training of workers engaged in the field of social welfare, he opened the School of Popular Education in 1924. He set up the Fellowship Club for the enhancement of communal harmony.

In 1930, he visited the Soviet Union to gain first hand experience about community development programmes undertaken in that country. He visited China and Japan in 1934.

He established Srinanda, in 1944, for the education of adult women. Cultural Fellowship with foreign countries is another organisation he set up. Many of his speeches were published in the form of booklets.

His son, Satyen Maitra, is a well-known educationist and social worker.